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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29233566">Liability</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmulte/pseuds/schmulte'>schmulte</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red White &amp; Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Short &amp; Sweet, Short One Shot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:07:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>605</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29233566</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmulte/pseuds/schmulte</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He learned. As the years went by, he learned, that loving him is a risk most were not willing to take. He was a storm that left lightning-scorched trees in its wake; Henry's love was rain seeping in through the tops of your boots to make your socks wet and your toes cold. He was a puddle that seemed shallow at first, only to reveal itself as a foot deep once you've stepped in it. </p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Liability</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Henry has always known he is a liability; ever since elementary school, when his third-grade valentine's mother had to sign a NDA form, he's known. It was a distant thought, then. Love was years away for him, and surely things would get easier as he got older. </p><p>He learned. As the years went by, he learned, that loving him is a risk most were not willing to take. He was a storm that left lightning-scorched trees in its wake; Henry's love was rain seeping in through the tops of your boots to make your socks wet and your toes cold. He was a puddle that seemed shallow at first, only to reveal itself as a foot deep once you've stepped in it. </p><p>He had tried. Oh, he had tried. His first crush, a boy a year older when he was fifteen, had been the first time he really realized what the reality was. He was too much. Too much for anyone to deal with, too great a risk for too little a reward. It had hurt, but he understood. </p><p>He gave up when he got to college. He allowed others to use him as a toy, discarded as soon as they got bored. It was what he thought he deserved; it was the best the thought he could get. One-night stands with Phillip's friends, quickies in bathrooms at parties and three am booty calls. It was exciting, for the others, to have this illicit thing. But it drained Henry. Watching couples walk around campus, hand in hand- watching the same lips he had kissed in a broom closet now smiling with an arm wrapped around a beautiful girl. </p><p>It was useless pretending it didn't hurt. He had tried, for a while, to not care. To have the stiff upper lip expected from a prince. But it was too much. The pushed down hurt and longing turned to crying in the back of a taxi back to campus and accumulations of empty ice cream containers. </p><p>Alex had been another liability. A forbidden desire, an unattainable dream. He was beautiful and free and so unapologetically himself; it made Henry want to be like that too, and that scared him more than the pining. Because if someone else in a similar situation could be like that, then what was Henry's excuse? Was he really just a coward hiding behind the convenience of difficulty?</p><p>The very foundation upon which Henry lives was threatened. After that first kiss on New Year's, after the lake house, when he had so desperately wished that what he wanted all along would not come true. Alex was not supposed to love him- he was supposed to use him, as everyone else did, and when he tossed Henry aside, he would move on, and Henry's heart would break, and life would go back the way it was supposed to. </p><p>But Alex did not get bored. Alex did not toss him aside. He danced in the rainstorm that was Henry's love; he splashed in puddles with both feet and a smile on his face, and told him how much he loved when the rain soaked his shoes and made his socks wet. Henry was not a liability, not to him. Loving him was a privilege, not a burden. </p><p>Henry always found himself saying it. In between breathless kisses, before walking out of their brownstone hand in hand.<em> I'm a liability, you know. </em>And every time he had braced himself for Alex to agree. To change his mind right there, to walk out the door and not look back. But he never did. </p><p>And he never would.</p>
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